Study: Teens' IQ may fluctuate over
time

Parents, you may be onto
something: A small new study suggests that teens'
intelligence, as measured by the IQ test, may
fluctuate throughout adolescence.
The changes -- in both verbal and nonverbal IQ
-- ranged to as much as 20 points and were
correlated with specific brain areas.

IQ has long been thought to
remain stable over a person's lifetime. The findings
are published online Oct. 19 in the journal Nature.

The new findings might have
implications for kids' educations, the researchers
said, because they suggest that children, especially
those with lower IQs, should not be pigeonholed into
specific educational and career trajectories based
on their IQ alone.

"Approximately one-fifth of
our sample had very substantial changes such that
they moved from above average to below average or
vice versa," said Cathy Price, senior study author
and professor at the Wellcome Trust Centre for
Neuroimaging,
University College London, U.K.

The
take-home message, according to one expert,
is that intelligence may not be as "fixed" in
adolescence as once thought.

According to the study
authors, prior studies have shown changes in IQ in
individuals over time, but those studies hadn't been
able to rule out the possibility of chance.

In their research, Price and
her colleagues measured the IQs of 33 individuals
aged 12 to 16 in 2004. They performed
MRI brain imaging of the adolescents' brains at
the same time.

Four years later, the same
group of individuals, now between 15 and 20 years
old, were tested and underwent additional MRI scans.

From Average to Gifted...
The team report that changes in IQ did seem to
occur, with some participants improving their scores
by as much as 20 points over time, relative to
people of similar age, while other kids saw declines
in IQ levels.

"A change in 20 points is a
huge difference," Price said in a statement to the
media. For example, she said, "if an individual
moved from an IQ of 110 to an IQ of 130 they move
from being 'average' to 'gifted.' And if they moved
from 104 to 84 they move from being high average to
below average.

According to Price, that
could have implications for adolescents' education,
since it suggests that intellectual ability changes
over time.

The fluctuations seemed
correlated to changes in certain brain areas, with
verbal IQ (such as might be used in language and
math) corresponding to a different part of the brain
than nonverbal changes (involving visual questions).

In the media statement, Price
explained that "the degree to which verbal IQ
changed correlated with the degree to which brain
structure changed in an area of the brain that we
are referring to as a 'motor speech area.' " She
added that this region, the brain's left motor
cortex, "is very active when we (including the
participants in our study) articulate speech."

Nonverbal performance
correlated to changes in the anterior cerebellum,
which is also activated when making hand movements,
Price noted.

The authors don't know yet
what is driving these variations in IQ over time.

Why?"It could either be an active environmental
effect (such as education/learning ) or it could
relate to developmental differences (late
developers/early developers) or it could be both,"
Price said in an interview. "This is the classic
nature/nurture debate. I am pretty sure that there
is a strong environmental effect because we know
that the adult brain changes with learning. In this
case, intensive training causes brain changes."

The take-home message,
according to one expert, is that intelligence may
not be as "fixed" in adolescence as once thought.

"The brain is clearly, at
least in the teenage years, more plastic and
amenable to change," said Paul Sanberg,
distinguished professor of neurosurgery and director
of the University of South Florida Center for Aging
and Brain Repair in Tampa. "The real question is,
does this continue into adulthood? Is this
reflective of changes we now see in plasticity in
the brain in adulthood? The data is suggesting that
things can get better."

It's not just for young
people!
Price hasn't yet measured whether or not IQ changes
in adults, "but my guess would be yes, because
intensive skill training in adults causes brain
changes."

However, another expert
cautioned that the study did have some limitations.
Michael Carey is an assistant professor of
psychiatry and behavioral science at Texas A&M
Health Science Center College of Medicine.

He believes that some of the
IQ tests used in the study were outdated, nor did
they take into account other factors, such as age,
gender or whether a person is right-handed or
left-handed when identifying brain structures
related to the change.

"It's a relatively small
sample and pretty selective. The average IQs are
above average, even though there's a lot of
variation," said Carey, who is also a psychologist
with Scott & White, in Temple. "The question is, how
representative is this of natural day-to-day
adolescence?"

By Amanda Gardner, HealthDay

On the Web:
www.nimh.nih.gov/media/video/giedd.shtml, the U.S.
National Institute of Mental Health has more on the
developing brain.

We're Talkin' Death Here People!
Teens Sleep Needs and Patterns

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have
identified adolescents and young adults (ages 12
to 25 years) as a population at high risk for
problem sleepiness based on "evidence that the
prevalence of problem sleepiness is high and
increasing with particularly serious
consequences." (NIH, 1997) This designation
evolved from a Working Group on Problem
Sleepiness convened in 1997 by NIH's National
Center on Sleep Disorders Research and the
Office of Prevention, Education, and Control.
The group concluded that steps must be taken to
reduce the risks associated with problem
sleepiness.

What are these risks? The most
troubling consequences of sleepiness are
injuries and deaths related to lapses in
attention and delayed response times at critical
moments, such as while driving. Drowsiness or
fatigue has been identified as a principle cause
in at least 100,000 police-reported traffic
crashes each year, killing more than 1,500
Americans and injuring another 71,000, according
to the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NHTSA, 1994). Young drivers age
25 or under are involved in more than one-half
of fall-asleep crashes.

The National Sleep Foundation's (NSF) Sleep
And Teens Task Force developed this report to
summarize existing research about sleep-related
issues affecting adolescents. We hope that this
report will serve as a valuable and practical
resource for parents, educators, community
leaders, adolescents and others in their efforts
to make informed decisions regarding health,
safety and sleep-related issues within their
communities.

A nonprofit, private organization, NSF is a
leader in public education efforts regarding the
risks associated with drowsy driving and other
issues related to sleepiness and sleep loss. We
welcome your comments about this report and your
suggestions for expanding public awareness and
supporting positive changes to protect the
safety and well-being of our nation's youth.

In recent years, scientists have determined
that experience can readily alter the brain, as networks of neural
synapses bloom in response to activity or wither with disuse. Expert
musicians, circus jugglers and London cab drivers studying mapsóeven
Colombian guerillas learning to readóhave all shown brain changes
linked to practice, several brain imaging studies have reported.

But until now, researchers had considered general intelligence
too basic to be affected by such relatively small neural
adjustments. Dr. Price and her colleagues don't know what caused the
changes in both the brain and the scores they documented, but
speculated they could be a result of learning experiences.

"An important aspect of the results is that cognitive abilities
can increase or decrease," said Oklahoma State University
psychometrician Robert Sternberg, a past president of the American
Psychological Association who wasn't part of the study. "Those who
are mentally active will likely benefit. The couch potatoes among us
who do not exercise themselves intellectually will pay a price."

Imagine this space filled with something creative:

Hack Your Brain

Brain Hacking is the art of making your
brain a better brain and becoming a better
person for it. You donít just hack your
brain to get smarter. Believe it or not,
intelligence as we know it is only a
fraction of the benefits. Healthier brains
are not just brighterótheyíre more creative,
more empathic, less stressed out and better
at solving problems. Sounds amazing, doesnít
it? Thatís because hacking your brain
directly affects your quality of life.

In truth, hacking your brain really isnít
hacking at all. Itís more like cerebral
self-maintence; all youíre doing is taking
advantage of your brainís fantastic
capabilities. That being said, there are
infinite ways to do it. Weíll start with 3.

1.
Exercise. Physical fitness comes
first because it is the most basic (and most
boring) way to hack your brain. Like all
parts of the body, the central nervous
system benefits greatly from exercise. When
you work out, your muscles work hard, while
your brain consumes over 1/5th (20%)
of the bodyís oxygen. Thatís ridiculous
considering that it only takes up
1/50th (2%) of your total mass.
Your brain needs all that oxygen to operate,
and the more you give it, the better it
operates.

Countless
studies have shown the correlation between
exercise and cognition. The most common
explanation for their relationship is that
when you are pumping iron, your brain is
pumping blood, and new blood vessels form
all over the place. Capillaries in the brain
carry oxygen to hard-working neurons and
increase their efficiency.

In short,
More Exercise = More Oxygen = Better
Brain.

There. Thatís
all weíre going to talk about exercise.

2.
Developing Skills. Most people have
dreams of learning something cool like how
to fly a plane or speak another language,
but few of us actually pursue those dreams.
Itís a time issue, according to most: too
much responsibility and not enough hours in
the day. Iím assuming since these people are
so busy, they never have time for silly
things like TV and Facebook.

The truth is
that most of us do have time to
learn something new, and most of us want to.
In fact, if your brain had its way, you
would never stop. Science has shown time and
time again that learning new skills grows
more brain cells and can even help you live
longer. Itís not as hard as you think,
either. When you want to learn something,
you actually look forward to it. Itís that
kind of voluntary, active learning that
hacks your brain into awesomeness.

3. Get
out more. It took nearly 4 million
years of evolution to produce the brain
floating inside your skull. And believe it
or not, this evolution did not take
place in a cubicle. For 3.9 of those 4
million years our ancestors lived, quite
literally, on the move. There were no
cities. There were no coffee shops. And
there were definitely no cubicles. It was
you, the wilderness, and lots of danger.

What your
brain was really made for is called
improvisational intelligence: the ability to
interact with novel situations. This goes
back to our evolution. Itís not enough to
know somethingóyou have to be able to recall
that something when you need it most, in
spontaneous situations. For our ancestors,
this was the difference between life and
death; recognizing a tiger and running like
hell.

All of this is
pretty much a roundabout way of saying that
too much stability is not good for your
brain. Only by escaping your comfort zone do
you activate your improvisational
intelligence, the most advanced part of your
mind. (Traveling is a great way to do this!)